


Amid The Fronds

by RockyMountainRattlesnake



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Flora & Fauna, Angst, Bringing an extinct species back from the dead too, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Humor, Recreational Drug Use, Vaguely Canon-compliant, so that's cool, that's basically it, the doctor gets stoned a whole bunch and everyone is very tired of his nonsense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-23 19:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20894732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockyMountainRattlesnake/pseuds/RockyMountainRattlesnake
Summary: The Doctor finds some special seeds at an offworld bazaar and brings a functionally-extinct Gallifreyan plant back from the brink.And as a bonus, it's basically catnip for Time Lords.Win-win.





	1. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor does drugs. If you've got issues with recreational drug use, I recommend you bow out now. For the rest of us, please enjoy this rambling ball of nonsense.
> 
> The author does not condemn or condone real-life people doing drugs, unless you're a kid. Don't do drugs, kids, the Doctor is 900 years old and can come back from the dead. You can't.

They were walking through the stalls on some off-world bazaar, in the part of the market the Doctor called “Bio-wares”, and Rose thought was more “Plants.”

Greenery and bluery and plants of every description burst from the stalls around them, the smells of alien foods flooding her nose. It was too much to take in; hundreds of aliens of every description bustled all around them, and she kept a firm grip on the arm of his leather jacket.

A booth caught her attention; growing in pots were roses, normal in shape but slowly strobing every colour of the rainbow. Rose tugged the surly Time Lord over, eyes wide.

“Look!” She chirped, “Roses! Oh, they’re so pretty…”

“Antidean Fleuries, actually,” The Doctor corrected, “Mind you, they did start with a regular Earth rose that I…might have dropped. But that’s not really important.” He looked around the stall, taking in the smells of all the flowers; it was nearly overwhelming.

As Rose cooed over the not-roses, the Doctor’s eyes fell on a DiamondSheet™ box covered in dust, resting on the side of the shopkeepers’s counter. Right beside her till.

She looked up at him expectantly, opening her beak to ask if he needed any help, only for the Doctor to cut her off by picking up the box and examining the contents.

His eyes went wide.

Inside were a handful of seeds, shaped like tetrahedral pyramids with red and gold spikes bursting out of each corner; He stared at them, jaw dropping.

The Doctor blew the dust off the top of the box, directly into the shopkeeper’s face, and ignored her coughing fit. He tried to lift the lid- there was a thumbprint lock on it, and the box was made of solidified liquid diamond sheet, so there was no smashing it.

“Where did you get these?!” he demanded, fishing out his sonic screwdriver and buzzing the lock open without bothering to ask. As she opened her beak to yell at him-

“Doctor? What’s that?” Rose came up behind him with a pot of Antidean Fleuries in hand, watching as he leaned in and took a deep sniff of whatever was inside.

The Doctor leaned back, and a strange, distant smile crossed his features. Just for a second, Rose swore his pupils were dilated so big she couldn’t see his irises at all.

“Excuse me!” the shopkeeper snapped, “You come into my stall and you start manhandling my personal belongings without asking. Put my seeds down before I call the police!”

The Doctor grinned at her, a strange, lazy look in his eyes and on his posture. He gently closed the lid and soniced it locked, placing the box on the counter.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just- it’s been awhile since I’ve- since I’ve seen those sorts of seeds. I- how much?” He said, fishing a credit stick out of his pocket.

The shopkeeper squawked, her crest perking up.

“They’re not for sale. Those seeds are priceless. They’re from a dead planet that was erased from-“

“I know exactly what those seeds are,” The Doctor said, and his smile turned decidedly nasty. A shudder slid down Rose’s spine; he had a look in his eyes like if this woman didn’t give him those seeds, a lot of people were going to get hurt.

“I want them. Name your price. Anything.” He said, staring her in the eyes.

“They’re not for sale!” she squawked, “Why won’t you get out of my shop?!”

The Doctor’s smile vanished, and he leaned in.

“Miss, I’m going to make this very simple: You name the price you want for these seeds and make enough money to buy Magrathea, right here, right now, or I’m taking these seeds with me and you get nothing. I’m not leaving this shop without these seeds.”

Rose stared at him like he’d gone mad.

“Doctor, it’s not- what are those? We can find them somewhere else, this place is huge-“

“No,” both the shopkeeper and the Doctor said in unison.

She huffed, and looked him up and down.

“You don’t have the funds.” She said sniffily, “These seeds are priceless. I wouldn’t part with them for less than thirteen billion credits.”

“Fifteen billion.” The Doctor replied, pulling a credit stick out of his pocket; there was a wild look in his eyes, an excitement Rose had only seen glimpses of.

The shopkeeper stared at him like he was insane.

“That’s three lifetimes of work on Alberta-6-“

“I have connections.”

“…Twenty billion.” She snapped, narrowing her eyes in a _he won’t do it _kind of way.

The Doctor wordlessly pulled a second credit stick out of his pocket and plonked it on the counter.

The woman took it and plugged it into her register, and her beak dropped open so far Rose could see the pharyngeal jaws in the back of her throat.

“Can I have the seeds or not?” the Doctor growled, “I’m not leaving without them.”

“I- I-“ she spluttered, “I- alright. They’re- they’re yours. I’m- They’re yours. Let me just- change the skinprint lock-“

A moment or two of fumbling ensued, involving the woman unlocking the box and jabbing the Doctor’s thumb over the glowing blue circle pad. It beeped, and the Doctor closed the box and clung it tightly to his chest.

The woman tapped a few things into her machine (Cash register? Did they even use cash in the future?) and made a strange noise like a hen being trodden on.

“Um,” Rose squeaked. She was staring at the Doctor, who was stroking his box with the kind of tenderness he typically only reserved for his TARDIS, and wondered if maybe she shouldn’t put her flowers back.

“I! Oh! Yes, sorry dear. How may I help- um-“ The shopkeeper and Rose both stopped and stared at the Doctor.

Who’d just made one of the single creepiest giggles either of them had heard in their entire lives.

“Um. These. Flowers. Um.” Rose said, gesturing at them, “Arthur’s Flurries, or-“

“I- uh- You’re with him?” The woman said, “Tell you what: Take the Fleuries on me. Just- Please get that man out of my shop.”

“Deal.” Rose said, scooping up her potted plant and grabbing the Doctor’s arm.

The walk back to the TARDIS was uneventful, even if the Doctor kept walking into people and stopping every few hundred yards to duck into a corner and sniff the seeds.

Every single time he did, he came back with a giddy grin on his face and his pupils blown so wide Rose was a little worried.

“What, um, what are those…?” she said nervously, after about the third diversion into a side street.

“Jarrin Root,” He said, clutching the box tight to his chest, “Jarrin Root. It’s been so _long,_ Rose… I haven’t had Jarrin Root since I was at the bloody academy-!”

Rose nodded as the Doctor started babbling about a wild party he’d had back in his youth- something about his first face? The words “Jarrin Root” didn’t really explain jack shit, and he wasn’t elaborating on it, either.

She bundled her silly Time Lord into his TARDIS, wondering if maybe he’d gone a bit mental.

~*~*~*~

Rose had found a nice spot in her room to put her flowers and was just fetching a plate to put underneath the pot when she heard a cheer come from down the hallway.

“Doctor?” she called, confusion on her face.

He was in the TARDIS’s onboard garden- really more of an automated farm. It had troughs of soil at waist height, in rows all down the length of the (Very long!) room. Automated robots on tracks planted, watered, and fertilized the soil, and banks of computers on the far wall monitored all the plants with a network of cameras. It was farming from the loony future, as invented by Time Lords who detested getting their hands dirty.

And the Doctor was stooped over a little wheeled cart with various instruments on it, examining a printed readout from one of his machines.

“Rose! Oh, Rose, come here, I’ve- this is just wonderful!” She’d never, EVER seen him this unabashedly happy. This excited. That said, they’d only yesterday watched the Earth die as the sun consumed it (And dealt with a hugely bitchy trampoline), so she didn’t exactly have many points of comparison to work with.

Rose sidled up to him and looked at the paper printout.

“It’s- I can’t read it,” She said, looking at him in confusion. The Doctor’s face fell for a moment- and then he smacked himself in the forehead.

“Oh! No, No, I’m sorry, it’s all in Huxic, sorry. It- all the seeds are viable. They’re all viable, Rose! And there’s eleven of them! Eleven whole seeds! I can- I could restart the species with this! I-“ He took a few deep breaths, staring at the seeds in their box.

Rose put an arm around him; his arm slipped over her shoulder automatically.

“These are them Jarrin Root seeds, right? What’s so special about them?”

The Doctor opened his mouth, and then closed it.

“I- They’re from- they’re from my home planet. They’re from Gallifrey. They’re native to Gallifrey, and- and- Look, Gallifrey’s not…it’s not around anymore. I don’t- I’ll tell you why, later. Maybe. But- All you need to know is, I thought I was the last thing that survived from Gallifrey. I thought it was just me, the last survivor. But now-“ He smiled, not manically, not crazily, just…

Hope. His eyes shone with hope.

“Now there’s twelve of us.” He finished.

Rose looked at him, and decided that now was probably not the best time to ask what exactly had happened to Gallifrey. He was happy, and there would be time for a long and painful conversation later.

“So…What’s the plan for them now?” She asked, looking over the troughs. Most of them had plants growing in them; some in the red dirt they stood next to.

The Doctor cackled and started pulling up plants like a man possessed, flinging them over his shoulder to smack the far walls. Rose just watched in shock at the callous destruction.

“Goodbye, Drakeweed! Carrots, who needs carrots- Banana seedling? Bah! Don’t need any of these, none, of these, no Xyleen mangoberries, Not you, not youuuu-“

He ripped out all the plants in that section of soil, throwing them all away, and Rose watched as he- very carefully and by hand- pushed each one of his Jarrin Root seeds into the freshly vacated red soil.

A robot scurried along the track as soon as he was done, covering over each seed with dirt and scanning each one in turn. The camera network overhead whirred around so that there was one above each plant, and a panel popped out from under the trough.

The Doctor tapped on the touchpad with his dirt-covered fingers a few times, eyes shining.

A blue field burst from the sides of the trough, covering over the Jarrin Roots like the cloth on a Wild West wagon; Rose looked at him quizzically and gestured at it.

“I get the robot and the cameras, but- that?” She asked.

“Time-acceleration field. One month passes in there for every one hour that passes out here. They’ll germinate in a few hours of real-time, and then- well, and then the mainframe will do genetic assays, find out if any of them are related, and put them out of the breeding pool. Then it’ll draw up a breeding scheme for crosses and pollinations, and with luck, we’ll have a healthy population in a few years.”

“And what happens to the siblings?” Rose asked curiously.

The Doctor’s smile tipped over from “hopeful” to “slightly deranged”.

“I get to…enjoy them.” He said, patting Rose on the shoulder. He turned to leave- and stopped.

“…But not you. Rose, please promise me you won’t try eating them. Jarrin Root is fatally toxic to things with only one heart. Don’t lick it, don’t sniff the leaves, don’t eat it. The roots are safe, but nothing else- Understood?”

Rose nodded.

“Understood.”

He perked up again, a much more normal smile gracing his features.

“Fantastic. Let’s go find some trouble then, shall we?”

~*~*~*~*~

Captain Jack was travelling with them now, which was interesting.

He knew lots of things, and was a lot more chatty than the Doctor. Quick with a joke or a story, and not likely to clam up and mutter something gruffly, then go back to sort-of-molesting his TARDIS.

They were walking down the hall, laughing about a story Jack was telling about getting his penis stuck in the taphole on what turned out to be a sentient maple tree when they passed by the indoor garden.

And the door was open.

Underneath the glowing blue time field, Rose could see the seeds has sprouted into small golden fern-type fronds.

Without thinking, she blurted out: “Jack, do you know what Jarrin Root is?”

Jack stopped mid-sentence and stared at her.

“…Wh- I mean, yeah. Why?” he asked, “Does- the Doctor doesn’t HAVE some, does he?”

Rose nodded.

“I- that’s worrying. I don’t know a lot. Jarrin Root’s not something that gets mentioned much. Usually it’s in the context of Time Lord stuff. But-“ He sighed, “About the only thing I know is that Time Lords like it. _A LOT._ Like… will-kill-people-to-get-their-hands-on-it a lot. He- he didn’t-?”

“No,” Rose said, and Jack’s shoulders sagged in relief, “But I thought he was gonna.”

“Well, okay. Good. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, Rose. It’s not really a common thing in…anyone’s neck of the woods, really. All I know is that Time Lords really love it.”

They both looked in on the little golden ferns, growing in their trough.

“He seemed really happy when he found the seeds,” Rose said softly, “I wonder what he’s gonna do with them? He mentioned the roots were safe to eat…”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe they taste really nice? Or maybe they give him a wicked boner that lasts ten hou- OW! It’s a possibility! OW! ROOOOOSE!”

Jack’s laughter rang through the halls as he ran away from Rose, bootfalls echoing into the growing room.

Where the ferns continued to grow.

~*~*~*~

The Jarrin Root was grown.

And Rose wanted to visit her mum.

And Jack wanted to go experience London for a bit.

Fuckin’ A.

The Doctor bundled her out the door, smiling and telling her to go say hi to Jackie for him, and most importantly, please, please take a few hours while she does it?

Jack was also bundled out the door, albeit far less gently; the Doctor basically shoved him out, with “I’m not going anywhere, don’t come back for four hours” ringing in his ears.

Right. Alone.

Finally.

He was grinning ear-to-ear, now, setting a few things on the TARDIS- first, disconnect the phone for the next four hours. He wasn’t taking house calls for a bit.

Secondly, sync up real-time and ship-time for the next four hours.

Finally, set the console to switch itself off for the next four hours. The console wouldn’t work, so he couldn’t…push any buttons, in an ill-advised haze.

The TARDIS prodded at the back of his mind- a telepathic probe laced with disapproval and disappointment.

“Get a grip,” he grumbled to her, “It’s been a full _700 years_ since I had this stuff. Get off my back and let me have some bloody fun for once in my sad fucking life.”

Another mental smack. This one sounded a lot like _NO SWEAR! RUDE BOY!_

The Doctor chuckled, rubbing the back of his head as the console powered off. All the lights went dead, the switches refused to switch, and the TARDIS hummed angrily at him.

The Doctor ignored it, cheerfully walking to the growing room.

~*~*~*~

Only one of the plants was related to the others, which meant he only had one to play with. There were a few different ways to do this- smoking it was like getting punched in the face, making tea was a close second, but the easiest way, the way they’d done things since Time Lords evolved, was just, well…

The Doctor shrugged off his leather jacket, hands trembling as he reached for the plant. It was golden, golden leaves, and it looked like a fern; a central shaft, branching off into dozens of featherlike quills. In the middle was a long fiddlehead that was vibrant red- the spores would burst from that and be carried by the wind.

The Doctor broke it off. This one was too closely related to one of the others to breed. And then he stared at it.

And licked it.

His pupils dilated, blown wide, and a giddy smile spread across his face.

Time flowed past him, always, always, the clock ticking, endlessly; what time was it? He knew. He always knew. He knew he was eight hundred and ninety-seven years, seven months, forty-eight hours, three minutes, and forty-seven seconds old, and counting. The timelines swirled around the plants, the rocks, the trees, the people; he could see what might be and what might not be if he focused a little, if he tried-

It was, frankly, a little bit tiring.

He licked the fiddlehead again, and the Jarrin Root took his hand and gestured down the side trail of complete lunacy.

“Why yes,” the Doctor’s brain said, “That sounds like a lovely time!”

He pulled up the whole plant, giggling like a madman as his flawless internal clock started to tick all wonkily. One second was stretching, and stretching, and stretching, and he watched the plant tear up from the soil simultaneously all at once and over a thousand years. 

The dirt fell on the floor, and each speck sounded like a boulder crashing down a mountain. With it fell the fiddlehead, crashing down as well, and the Doctor leaned in and took a deep sniff of the leaves-

Time _stopped._

He giggled.

Everything stopped. Time stopped. His mental count stopped. Everything STOPPED.

Tick tick tick tick-

Silence.

The ticking was gone.

The giggle burst out of him, triumphant, free, FREE-

He staggered into the galley with his prize, stopping every few seconds to rub the leaves on his face- yes, yes, yes, and also, yes, again but more so.

The countertops were stainless steel and his fingers hit them, marvelling at the cold sensations, the smoothness, everything felt so… so…

Smooth

A knife gleamed in the knife block, and some voice in his head said he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t- but, but-

Rose. Rose. Rose needed- Jarrin soup, Jarrin cake, the tastes and flavours of his childhood bursting through his memory onto his tongue. Cut the leaves off, let the root air-dry-

A robotic arm came out of the wall, and the Doctor stared at it. The gears whirred louder than chainsaws, the movements so fluid and beautiful.

He stared at it, watching it chop the leaves off-

And lunging before the damn thing could take his leaves away from him, his precious, precious leaves.

He hissed, and in the back of his mind the TARDIS was growling at him.

She was a bit annoyed.

“Mmmmf, fine…” he muttered. She was being stuffy. Wouldn’t let him chop the tops off himself. He was fine, he was sober. He stumbled away with his four precious fronds. Fresh Jarrin leaves. Fresh Jarrin leaves.

He made it about as far as the hallway before collapsing and giving in.

Rubbing the leaves on his face, time stopped all around him- he felt so good, so very, very good.

A laugh burst itself up from his chest- Fucking Time Lord Council pricks. Fucking Academy. They’d banned it, banned Jarrin Root for anything besides eating; didn’t want their students immune to the flow of time, for even a little while. Didn’t want them thinking…or not thinking.

It was so tiring. So exhausting. Guilt rode him like he was a used mule, the world’s sins piled on his shoulders- and most drugs didn’t touch him. Alcohol and its effects were a choice, marijuana was a fun toy with no teeth; nothing worked, nothing.

But this did.

He rubbed the leaves on his face, the texture and smell of mint and _home_ ringing though his head. Laughter bubbled up; he felt peace for the first time in fuck knows how long. Peace untinged by worry for…

…Rose?

He hugged the leaves to his chest, wishing he could share this with Rose. Wanting her to join him. Friends. They didn’t know. They didn’t know how nice it was to not feel…

The floor was so smooth. He found himself with his face pressed against it, humming; rubbing it appreciatively. Smooth. So smooth.

Everything was a giddy, minty, SILENT dance, and he knew if he let one of his leaves dry and smoked it, oh, that would be something else. His telepathy would get jacked, and the hallucinations were the shit that inspired fucking poetry. And making a tea-

But for now, he had his fresh leaves. And-

He sat up, gripping his frond tight and breaking the stem, letting the smell cascade over him.

The Doctor stumbled to his feet and walked into his room, throwing the other three fronds on the floor. And then, into his console room.

The TARDIS was pushing into the back of his mind, trying to get his attention, and the Doctor grinned at the column.

“So pretty. You’re soooooo pretty,” he babbled, flopping in the jumpseat and stroking the edge of the control disk, “But, you know. I hear you knockin’, but’cha can’t come in-“

The last sentence was sing-song, joyful; he couldn’t hear anything. The voices in his head, the constant telepathic whispers- from his ship, from his companions, from time itself, from his own guilt and fear and misdeeds- it was all gone. All wiped away.

He was alone in his own head.

The Doctor gripped the frond in both hands, ripping off leaves with his teeth- like it was a turkey leg and he was ripping the meat off. Chew, chew, the texture of rough bootstraps and crocodile skin, and he didn’t need to chew as long as he did, but the taste-

Sweet, sweet like syrup, and it bubbled up in him, swallowing it down-

This was good. This was…was… primitive, in the best way. Basal. Like something from his childhood... 

Siblings, he’d had siblings as a child…and they, the ones who looked after him and his siblings, the adults…not parents, not on Gallifrey…

They’d make him Jarrin Soup and then retreat to their room with the leaves, giggling, and he knew why, now. It felt so…

…Not as good as when he’d smoked it, at the academy, though…

The Doctor toppled off the jumpseat and lay there on the floor, staring at the ceiling. For a minute or a century. Just…being. Being, linearly, for a rare moment.

And he wasn’t bored.

God, if only Rose had a second heart…

Was this how humans always felt? Aside from the whole “high as a fucking kite” thing? Quiet and unhurried by the passage of time all around them?

“Lucky fuckers,” he mumbled, rubbing the leaf on his face with one hand and feeling the grating under his fingerstips with the other. The gaps in the steel lines felt like chasms, the whirring machinery of the TARDIS like the heartbeat of the universe…

A distant noise, a million miles away. A voice. A familiar voice.

“DOCTOR?!”

Oh…Was that Rose…?

What time…was it…?

_Four and a half hours, you fucking stoner,_ the TARDIS snapped, forcing her way into his brain; no mean feat, considering the Jarrin fog.

“What’s that he’s holding-? Oh, god, has he been EATING it?!” And oh, dear, that was Jackie Tyler’s voice, which meant her mum was here too, and-

The Doctor started laughing, a deep belly-laugh.

Rose filled his vision, kneeling over him, and he grinned up at her.

“Hiiii Roseeeeee,” He slurred, “m’in shit now, eh?”

Jackie Tyler’s face loomed a thousand miles above him, and he grinned up at it.

She was not happy.

“Is he-“

“Sick!” Rose yelled, “He’s sick. You’re sick, right Doctor? Been feeling poorly for days.”

“Yessssss….” He said, nodding slowly. Rose, Rose, why couldn’t she have Jarrin Root too? She was so smart. Being smart was fun until you thought of sad things. He wished he could share with her.

“Sick. Yes. Very sick.” Rose said, struggling to help him to his feet; he clung to the precious leaf with one hand, leaning on her, boneless.

She was so WARM. He could feel her one heartbeat through her thin shirt, thump-thump-thump-thump. Could hear it, too, but that was an always thing, not just an occasionally thing.

“-He doesn’t look sick,” Jackie was saying, suspicion all across her face, “he looks bloody high. What’s that plant he’s holding?”

“A remedy!” Rose lied, and the Doctor was sooooooo proud of her. And he wanted to say something, but the TARDIS rammed her way through his mental fog again, and slapped him hard enough to keep his mouth shut.

“A remedy for what?” Jackie was saying, and her voice was echoing off the walls, off the coral struts.

“He said some long name. It’s a sickness. A Time Lord sickness. Makes him all, uh, dopey, like this. The plant- the plant helps!” Rose said, trying to get him to move.

Everyone was so frantic. So panicked. Couldn’t they be calm? Time wasn’t moving. Nothing was in his head. He couldn’t hear the edges of their thoughts…

The door opened again, and the Doctor looked up a full minute after it closed again. Jack was back, holding some bags, and he smiled at him. Stupid Jack. Poor old Jack. The timelines said some fucked up shit about HIS future, maybe…

“Doc? Doc, you alright?!” Jack’s eyes were wide, and he ran over-

“He’s sick,” Rose said, “He needs bed rest. He probably collapsed in here waiting for us, ‘cause we’re all late. The plant’s a _remedy,_ right Jack?”

The way she stressed the word _remedy_ made the Doctor giggle.

“Roseee… you’re too good… to… to everyone.” He slurred, as the two of them bundled him off to his room and threw him on his dark blue bedsheets with his boots still on.

The door closed, and he faintly heard an argument in the hallway; but that wasn’t his problem.

The room was dark.

His head was quiet.

Time had stopped.

A smile crossed his face, the root tumbling from his fingertips.

Maybe just a little nap. Until time started itself again…

Yeah.

He closed his eyes for the first time in a week and a half.

~*~*~*~

Jackie had left, just barely convinced of that the Doctor was indeed “sick” and not high as a fucking kite. Which had taken some trying.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Rose said as soon as the door closed behind her mother, “I leave to go say hi to my mum and he takes the time to _get fucking stoned?”_

“And more importantly,” Jack added, “stoned WITHOUT US?!”

“EXACTLY! Whatever that leaf stuff is, it looked pretty bloody good.”

“Well, actually,” Jack said, “I wouldn’t sample some, if I were you. It’s- yeah, it’s toxic if you only have one heart. If you break the leaves and sniff it it can send your heart into convulsions. And if you eat it, cardiac arrest basically on the spot.”

“Bastard,” Rose muttered, rubbing her forehead, “Well, I guess we’ll just…let him sleep it off. And then yell at him when he wakes up.”

“I hear that.” Jack paused, and then looked around, and leaned in conspiratorially.

“Hey, Rose? Can I let you in on a little secret?”

“What?”

“Ever looked in the spice rack in the galley?”

“No, why?”

“He’s got a jar full of marijuana. That’s what he puts on his scrambled eggs. It doesn’t affect him…”

“What are we waiting for, then?”

And they both took off down the corridor, laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that this is kind of crummy and I'm sorry. 
> 
> If you liked it, leave a comment! It inspires me to write faster. Please comment. Pls. That's fanfic author catnip, that is.


	2. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Ten's turn to tend to the plants. 
> 
> Martha is very, very unimpressed. 
> 
> Remember kids, Ten is a trained blunt-smoking professional, and also, again, 900 years old and immune to lung cancer. Please don't do drugs if you're under 18, and always consider the risks before you do anything stupid.

The Family of Blood were dealt with, and he was back in his TARDIS, back to himself. Back to being the Doctor.

Back to being the Doctor in his growing room. Coat off, suit jacket off, dress shirt sleeves rolled up. Hands covered in dirt and specs on as he examined his plants.

They were doing okay. He had about forty of them, now, the computers working out the breeding scheme. Two hundred distinct specimens would be enough, and then he could find a planet to plant them all. Let them grow free. Spread them through the universe.

He stroked one of the golden fronds before him, wishing it was safe to rip a leaf off and have a little chew. The temptation…

But, no.

These were the last _fertile_ Gallifreyans in the galaxy. These were the only other survivors. It was him and this roomful of plants, and he- he felt a duty of care for them.

That said, it wasn’t doing enough to distract him.

He reactivated the time acceleration field over the batch of plants he was examining for Vortex Rot, mind adrift. The stress was starting to pile up again, and he wished there was just some way to…

His mind drifted back to the events of the last little while.

Did he feel guilty for what he’d done to the Family? No, actually. But a lot of other things…

Rose, for example…

The Doctor sighed. He hadn’t been sleeping well, by Time Lord standards. Being Chameleon-arched was never fun, and he still didn’t feel settled in his skin.

Plus, you know, the usual feelings of self-hate, crushing guilt, manic depression, all that sort of shit.

God fucking damn did he hate John Smith right at that moment. The bastard didn’t remember a thing…

Rose, for a start. Gallifrey, for a second course. And, god, fuck…

He’d fucked up.

“Doctor?” Martha’s voice called to him, and he looked up.

She was leaning in the doorway of the growing room, in her pyjamas. “I’m gonna hit the sack for a bit, yeah? No getting captured by space-zombies for the next eight hours, okay?”

The Doctor plastered a smile on for her.

“Yeah, it’s fine. We’ll just stay in the vortex for a bit, I think.”

“Alright. And…Doctor?”

“Yeah?”

“Get some rest. Seriously. You look tired. You need to relax.” Martha said seriously.

“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor Jones?” he asked jokingly, and Martha folded her arms.

“Yes. And also as your friend. Now go get some bloody rest, before I make you.”

The Doctor put his hands up, following her towards the door. Washed his hands off in the sink, dried them with a quick touch to a special panel on the wall, and grabbed his coat.

He followed her to their sleeping quarters.

“Night Martha,” he said as he slipped into his bedroom, waiting for her replying “’night” before closing the door behind him.

He turned to survey his kingdom, shoulders sagging.

Same as it ever was, really. A big four-poster bed, a dresser, a desk, and a pile of books. And also a pile of pictures on all the shelves, but, well.

An awful lot of them featured a certain blonde, and all of them were laying facedown on the wood with their backrests in the air.

The Doctor waved his hand at the switch from ten feet away, the light going off automatically, and flopped on his bed.

He wasn’t going to get any sleep.

Martha _had _been telling him to relax, lately.

His eyes fell on the dresser in the corner.

Her sleep cycle was approximately seven hours, thirty-six minutes, and fifty seconds, when you averaged it all out. So... he was all alone with his thoughts, that dark swirling void…

He sat up, feet still on the floor, and started undoing his shoelaces.

He kicked them off, still in his suit, and let his mind wander. Thoughts falling on his precious garden, his precious plants, the last fertile children of Gallifrey.

And their fallen sibling he’d pulled aside a few years ago.

“Right now,” he said aloud to nobody, “I’d really, really, really like to not think for a bit.”

The Doctor sat up, eyes falling on his dresser once again. Which did not contain any clothes.

He padded over to it in his socks, opening one of the topmost drawers with a nervous smile.

He bit his lip.

Dried golden fronds. Three of them.

He hadn’t touched the other Jarrin plants. They were fragile; pulling a frond off could doom the whole plant, and he’d barely managed to triple their numbers. They weren’t stable enough to start pulling plants out of the lineup so he could get fucked up for funsies.

He’d do a lot of things, but condemn the only other Gallifreyans in the universe to extinction like him so he could get high…

Not happening.

However.

He pulled out one of the fronds, running his fingertips along the bone-dry leaves. His mouth watered- it wasn’t fresh enough to get high from just sniffing it, not anymore, but-

He took a deep sniff, and his pupils dilated a bit.

Still smelled good.

“This is a bad idea,” he said aloud.

A pause.

“…And I really don’t care anymore.”

He’d tried smoking for a spell, and the materials to roll his own cigarettes were still in the study. He shoved his trainers back on and laced them up, then carried the precious leaf over to his desk a few doors down.

Careful to walk quietly by Martha’s door.

The rolling machine was a simple mechanical device, and he had an empty jar and mortar and pestle. He pulled leaves off, ground them up by hand…

The memories of that one night at the Academy swam behind his eyes. The Corsair showing him how to grind some illicit Jarrin he’d found, rolling it up…

The Doctor cut a few squares of cigarette paper (Properly he should be using lyndragon silk sheets, but, y’know, Gallifrey was gone and it was all his fault and all that) and made a little fold in one.

Tipped a bit of his hand-ground Jarrin leaf into the paper slip.

Licked the edge.

Rolled it up.

Right. A few more, and then where was his lighter…?

“I need a better bloody coping mechanism,” he muttered as he found a lighter, “Take up knitting or kickboxing or something. Learn the bagpipes…hah! Me as a Scot, now there’s a laugh…”

The question of where, exactly, to smoke these three joints then reared its ugly head. Because he wasn’t exactly going to be entirely…useful… for awhile…

And he didn’t want to do it in here or his bedroom, because Jarrin smoke STANK.

Which left the console room. Which had next-level air filtration, and no bedsheets or priceless relics to stink up.

The TARDIS was gonna _love_ him.

As he walked up, he could feel her anger in the back of his mind.

“Don’t be such a killjoy,” he snapped at the main column, “I swear, just because YOU’RE a straight-edge, doesn’t mean I have to be.”

A pause as she sent into his mind.

“Look, let me have my fun. And hey- I’m smoking it. That means we can talk much better- oh, get off my bloody back!” he snapped, “Honestly…”

He reclined in the jumpseat and brought one of the joints to his lips, holding it between his teeth and sparking it up.

…Why was he cupping his hand over the end? He was indoors. There was no breeze to put it out.

…Whatever.

Right, now, pull the smoke into his mouth until it cooled a bit, then inhale properly so it didn’t burn his throat, like the Corsair had told him…

…Well actually, if he was being completely honest, the Corsair had invented this thing s/he called “Shotgunning” which involved kissing, which-

The Doctor took another drag. Best not to think about that, it’d make him homesick.

The effects from smoking it weren’t nearly as immediate as having fun with the fresh root. God, he couldn’t wait until it was safe to harvest a few from his little growing room.

Which at this point was starting to become the Jarrin Room. It was mostly Jarrin, now, with a few bananas from extinct cultivars thrown in for good measure. Oh, and his Bacon Tree. Mmmm…

Another draw. Blow the smoke out and watch it spiral up to the ceiling.

His pupils started to slowly widen.

The Doctor kicked at the floor, having another draw. Maybe the tea might have been a better idea, in retrospect… smoking it was a great way to be horribly _un_calm, just the opposite of what Martha had told-

Fuck it.

Another puff, and he watched the smoke coil higher and higher…

The smile started to creep onto his face.

It started with a giddy feeling, building in the back of his mind, pressing up against all the darkness and shoving it, slowly, slowly, slowly, out of its way.

His pupils grew a bit wider.

“Oh,” he muttered, “I forgot to lock the console…whatever…”

Didn’t matter. Another draw. And another. And-

The sparkling lines of timelines wrapping all around him, twisting, turning, shimmering…they slowed.

The ticking in his mind, the endless incrementation of one second after another, of his life cascading towards its inevitable conclusion, slowed, just a little, just… tick….tick……..tick….

And then SPED RIGHT THE FUCK UP TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICKTICKTICKTICKTICK

The Doctor’s pupils dilated to their maximum size, and the grin he wore ratcheted up about five notches, from “Happy Time Lord” to “Someone please call the paddy wagon this man is frightening my child.”

Another drag. Another. Another. Another. Another. Another. Time was warping around him, the shimmers flying apart into ribbons, everything shattering, time itself flying apart at the seams into a jittery timelessness where all that was left was mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, energy, this euphoria slamming into the back of his brain-

The fire crawled to his fingers, burning them and tumbling to the floor; he stomped on the end, shaking like a leaf, eyes wide and utterly manic. Stood up, and all through his mind the whispers swirled-

_You- you- why do you keep doing this to yourself?! _His TARDIS’s voice was clear as a bell in his mind, singing out her frustration with him, and the Doctor responded by singing, the words of an ancient Gallifreyan battle-song, something mad and pointless and _not_ a response.

_I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME PROPERLY WHEN YOU’VE SMOKED THAT STUFF YOU DRUG-ADDLED SPASTIC, NOW TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE PLAYING AT! _

The Doctor stopped in his trembling, shaking excitement, staring at the console, eyes wide, and he leaned forward and kissed the console.

_Loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou _was beating through his brain like a hummingbird’s wings, like his hearts were thundering forwards, tachycardia split twice down the middle, driving more of the drug to his brain EVEN FASTER-

_I hate it when you do this. I hate this. You’re not YOU. _

She was mad, he didn’t care, the warmth, the giddiness, it soared to every part of his body, flushing him; like he was a human man, like he was human, HAH-

He could hear Martha’s dreams swirling in her mind, could hear the TARDIS’s thoughts down to the smallest fraction, and he wanted- he wanted-

He wanted to dance, he wanted a party, he wanted to move and be free and for this giddy feeling, this manic energy thundering through his veins to never, ever end.

The Doctor was laughing, then, hammering at his controls, putting in this directive and that coordinate, driving them, driving them-

The TARDIS saw his request for Yorua Major in 8887.45, and she decided on the spot that he was a moron and wanted to get himself killed. Which…he probably did, thinking on it. Because that was a party that turned so famously violent that the legend of the riots echoed across the galaxy for the rest of time.

And swirling around in that stupidly oversized head of his was _HAHAHAHAI’LLSTOPTHERIOTSANDDANCEANDDANCEANDTHEREWILLBEMUSICANDHAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHWHEEEEEEE _all in utterly unparseable gibberish.

So the TARDIS made a snap decision for a better place to dump his dumb, dumb, dumb ass...

And actually, while she was at it…

~*~*~*~

Just as the Doctor was throwing the switch to send them out of the vortex, Martha’s bed lifted up and dumped her onto the floor.

“HEY!” she spluttered, awake in an instant; her bed had HYDRAULIC LIFTS on it?!

A presence prodded at the back of her mind.

The TARDIS…? But wh… why…?

She was afraid. Afraid why?

An image of the Doctor in the console room flashed into her mind. 

Oh.

Martha sighed and walked over to her pile of clothes.

“Give me a minute…” she muttered.

  
~*~*~*~

He was onto his second, now, and the hallucinations had yet to kick in fully, but that was fine, that was totally fine. Patience was a virtue, right? And more importantly, what with the way time was currently shitting its organs out, the two-hour mark would be here before he could uncross his eyeballs. Although.

It was taking the TARDIS an AWFULLY long time to sling them through the vortex. 

Whatever. Hit the streets with his coat on, finish this joint, and the hallucinations should kick in about the time the party really got going, and then he’d have a time and a half.

He grabbed his overcoat from where it was hung over a coral strut and then immediately toppled over as the TARDIS brought herself to a fairly gradual stop.

He lay on the grating, feeling the energy of the universe shaking through his veins, and- Martha?

Martha was awake, he could feel, he could feel her annoyance through all the walls-

Smoking Jarrin was never a good idea, except when it was the best idea in the whole fucking universe.

A giggle burst up out of him, and he sat up, taking another deep draw of his joint. She was gonna catch him, and she was gonna yell, or-

Or she was gonna drag him to the medbay, make him wait it out, just when it was about to get very good indeed.

Or, and this was an option his giddy brain spat up with childish glee, he could run, and she could _try_ and catch him.

Martha emerged from the hallway just in time to hear the Doctor laughing and sprinting out the door, and she growled. Just as she was about to give chase-

The console lit up brightly, all the buttons flashing, pointing down at something.

Martha trotted over to it, eyes falling on-

What was unmistakeably a fucking joint.

“W- The- he- He smokes weed?!” she spluttered, shoving the joint in her pocket and running out the door. Fucking hell, they were going to have WORDS after this-!

She was NOT, NOT- not dealing with a bloody addict-

And that was assuming it even _was_ weed, not some weird alien shit-

On the other hand, the weed in the spice rack which he put on his pasta was kind of a giveaway that it probably wasn’t weed. She’d called him on that, and the Doctor had assured her that it was just a spice that tasted nice to his…frankly rather questionable palate.

Fucking alien men.

*~*~*~*~*

The Doctor stumbled out of the TARDIS, eyes nearly popping out of his skull and the joint almost fully smoked. He took a last draw until it started to burn his fingertips, and threw it down and stomped it.

Only then did he have a look around.

This was not Yorua Major. This was, in fact, Earth, based on the smells in the air. And more specifically, an island on Earth. And even more specifically, an island with nothing but empty ocean around it for miles.

There were a couple of scraggly palm trees growing in the sand, some tufts of grass, and…nothing. The island was barely big enough to hold a curling rink, let alone anything else.

He sat down in the sand, eyes wide and brain whirring at a million miles an hour.

He tried to muster up the coherence to yell at his disobedient ship, but…

The trees were swaying. The sun was shining. The whole world was starting…to…

“Oh, yesssssss…” he rumbled, eyes going wide as the world started to warp around him.

The trees were bending themselves towards the ground, curving into loops; the sky was too hot, too bright, patterns of speckles and dots starting to dance on the endless blue canvas.

And he wanted to enjoy it, but the sun was beating down, and-

He was way, way, way too hot.

The ocean’s waves crashed inshore with a rhythm that synced up with his heart, the colours in the waves shimmering like an oil spill. Everything was twisting, warping, and time itself was dribbling through his fingertips-

Heat, though, heat was the pressing concern- was he sweating? Every drop on his forehead felt like rain falling down and hitting his lovely coat, and that wouldn’t do. He panted, heat seeping into his core, the sun was merciless-

Off with the coat. Off with the suit jacket. The dress shirt billowed in the breeze but he was still too hot-

Off. Off with it all.

In just his trousers and tie, the Doctor staggered away from his TARDIS, the three steps towards the other side of the island, and sat down in the sand.

The breeze hit his skin, sending little shivers all over his body, and oh, oh that was so, so much better…

He fell back on the wet sand, the sun beating down on his bare chest. Tastes tangled with smells, the memory of meals long since passed mixing with the scents and sounds his addled brain was picking up.

As the world started to tumble around him, the giggles began in earnest.

~*~*~*~*~

Martha ran out of the ship, eyes wide. Wherever he’d been intending to go, this- probably wasn’t it.

She balked at the scene before her, unsure what was the weirdest part.

Sit-rep:

-The Doctor’s clothes were scattered all over the beach, shoes in two different directions, leather jacket, suit jacket, dress shirt, and undershirt all scattered in the sand.

-They were on an island where the native flora was three trees and some grass and was about the same size as her first boyfriend’s ballsack, and

-The Doctor himself was lying on his back, feet in the water, completely shirtless, and rubbing wet sand into his face and chest.

Martha took a deep breath and asked the good Lord to please give her some strength for this one.

“Doctor!” she yelled, “What the FUCK are you DOING?!”

The response was a weird and very, VERY creepy giggle.

Martha stomped over to him, glaring down and hoping for some kind of an explanation-

Which she wasn’t likely to get. The Doctor dropped the ball of wet sand he’d been holding and craned his neck to look up at her, the smile on his face big enough to nearly tip over into terrifying.

Oh, and his pupils were so dilated she could barely see his irises.

In spite of the face that he was outside in direct sunlight under the baking tropical sun. Where a normal person’s irises would have contracted to protect the eyes from damage.

“Stimulants? Amphetamines, maybe? Really? Really, doctor? Amphetamines?!” Martha demanded.

He grinned up at her and said- something. Something in Gallifreyan, presumably. It sounded a bit like “H’yan traf n’dok ferl-“ and then went off into unintelligible mumbling.

Well, okay, it was a start, at least. At least he was- TALKING.

“Okay- sure. Can you stand? You need to get up, Doctor. You need to go back inside. Why are all your clothes off?”

He stared at her for a moment, babbling something else unintelligible, and then- she could see the gears turning in his head.

“Hot. So hot.” He mumbled after a long pause, “Too hot here. Feel like I’m burning up.”

“Okay, that- sounds a bit like a fever.” He was flushed, too, from his face down to- well, down to where his navel really SHOULD have been.

Martha sighed. “Doctor. You need to get up.”

He tried to sit up, pushing himself upright and into a sitting position.

He was still wearing his goddamn tie, Martha noted with slight hysteria.

She reached out and grabbed his shoulder, trying to steady him.

~*~*~*~

Martha was leaning over him, swaying, spinning, and the birds were chirping, now, along with the beating of his hearts, and he could only smile up at her.

She was speaking. Something about amphetamines? Oh. Oh! “Have you taken amphetamines?” He giggled.

“No, don’t be silly, Martha, amphetamines don’t affect Time Lords!” he said, in what he THOUGHT was perfectly coherent English. And based on the look on her face, it…wasn’t.

More questions. Could he stand? Probably, but the sand under his fingers was so inviting, each grain a sensation like rolling a mountain between his fingertips. And on the sensitive skin of his face, it was like- the sensation was indescribable, the cool water and rolling sand grains coupling with the swirling colours-

Oh. Another question. His clothes. Um.

“I’m so very hot,” he started, and then saw her face. Confused. So confused. Um. Not English…

Slowly…try…

“h…eee…” no, not English, still not-

“Hot,” he tried, and the spark of recognition in her eyes, this was the one.

“Too hot here. Feel like I’m burning up.” he managed to choke out, and she nodded.

A fever? Possibly.

Some more things came out of her mouth, and he tried to sit up for her. It was difficult- sparkles danced in front of his eyes as he forced his arms behind himself, levering up.

And then she grabbed his shoulder.

Some small, innately sensible bit of the Doctor’s brain instantly slammed up every wall he had in his mind, blocked her out; it was a reflex that would take more than Jarrin root to weigh down. Normally he wore so many layers to keep people from touching him, to keep his thoughts to himself, but he’d forgotten- oh-

Martha helped him to his feet, and he stumbled towards the TARDIS, the shimmering TARDIS.

“Can you see,” he asked her, trying to wrench his hand away and failing, “Can you see the time swirling around her? Isn’t she beautiful?”

Martha just nodded blithely. Made him stop and lean against a tree.

She vanished.

He let his mental guards drop again, feeling out for minds. Martha’s emotions swirled, a mix of annoyance and concern and curiosity. A thought floated to the top- how can he be feverish when he feels normal?

He smiled.

A bundle of clothing was shoved into his arms and he was lead through the doors, into the TARDIS. Feeling her voice, her annoyance, and his smile shrunk a little.

Martha pulled him, and pulled him, and he was in bare feet on the metal grates, wanted to feel the cold metal between his toes, wanted-

And then the hall, the hall was there, and it was opened-

The clothes tumbled from his fingers and he flopped on his bed. The room was dark, and Martha was rummaging around in the pile of sand-covered clothing for something.

She apparently found it, straightening up and looking at him.

A question.

Time Lord body temperature.

“Thirty dead.” He mumbled, attempting to squirm onto his back.

The door closed, and locked.

~*~*~*~

Martha slammed the door and pointed the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver at it, hoping to god it knew that she wanted it to lock. A quick jimmy of the handle confirmed that it had obeyed, and she went over to the medbay to get a thermometer.

Back into the Doctor’s room with it, unlocking the door with the screwdriver. It was an ear thermometer, and Martha ignored his giggling and checked his temperature.

31.6 and dropping.

“Okay. You don’t have a fever,” she said, biting her lip, “I want you to stay here and rest up. Don’t do anything else. Just- let me figure some stuff out.”

The Doctor grinned up at her, eyes unfocused.

Fucking aliens.

~*~*~*~

With the Doctor safely sequestered in his room and the lock sonic’d shut (though if he wanted to get out, it probably wouldn’t hold him for long) Martha turned her attention to the unsmoked joint.

She took it to the medbay, reasoning that it probably contained the same substance he’d been smoking.

“And it’s probably not weed, because that’s on his spice rack and he’s specifically said weed doesn’t touch him. So it’s something else.”

The medbay had many automated systems, but when Martha entered she was pleased to see that it had rearranged itself to look a bit more like a domestic Earth medical lab. Machines were laid out on countertops instead of concealed in the wall, and there was even a microscope. The supercomputer that usually governed all the equipment was quietly humming to itself, content to clam up and let the med student work.

Martha sighed and patted the wall.

“Thanks,” she said to the TARDIS, “You get me, even if he doesn’t.”

There was a pack of rubber gloves, and she put them on; she also slipped on a lab coat and some goggles. Whatever this stuff was, if it was potent enough to affect a Time Lord like _that,_ she didn’t want it anywhere near her skin or clothes.

Suited up, Martha grabbed a small dissecting tray and carefully unrolled the joint. A jumble of yellow leaf flakes fell out, looking like spices or weed.

On the bench next to her was a large white box- the bio-scanner, the Doctor had called it. A hollow cube with an open front and a light shining down from the top of the box.

With a pair of forceps, she grabbed a large piece and placed it in the box. It started to hum, and levitated the piece a few inches off the base, scanning it from all angles.

A holographic screen popped out, giving her some information on the substance.

_Dried Jarrin Leaves. _

_Home Planet: Gallifrey _

_Terrestrial. _

_Time range: Unknown. _

_Medical information: _

_Jarrin Leaves are a potent CNS combination stimulant/depressant depending on route of administration. Eating or drinking the leaves in a tea will produce powerful depressant effects. Inhaling the chemicals on fresh leaves or smoking dried leaves produces a powerful stimulant effect. These effects are strong enough to kill organisms with single vascular systems. There is no known antidote for Jarrin leaves._

_In organisms with double vascular systems, Jarrin leaves [DATA DEFICIENT]_

_Symptoms of consuming Jarrin leaves are: _

_[ERROR: DATA_DEFICIENT]_

_Residence time in the body is approximately [DATA DEFICIENT]. The biological half-life is approximately [DATA DEFICIENT]. Excretion is [DATA DEFICIENT]._

“Fascinating,” Martha muttered, “This is telling me jack shit.”

She impatiently scrolled down to the bit that started with “Treatment.”

_Treatment: _

_There is no known antidote for Jarrin leaves. If a single-hearted organism ingests Jarrin leaves, attempt chest compressions and seek specialist medical attention. If the organism has inhaled Jarrin leaves, defibrillate to stop arrythmia and seek medical attention immediately. _

_For double-hearted organisms, [DATA DEFICIENT]._

** _UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD JARRIN DERIVED PRODUCTS BE ADMINISTERED INTRAVENOUSLY. _ **

“Okay, great.” Martha muttered, “this was a complete waste of time. That told me nothing.”

She rubbed her forehead. The Doctor had two hearts and the only gaps in this thing’s banks were the bits that applied to double-hearted organisms. So that was just friggin’ brilliant.

That meant she’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.

She carefully removed the piece of Jarrin from the scanner and placed it in the tray, then got out of her lab kit and walked out of the room. The gloves hit the bottom of the trashcan and the door closed behind her.

Martha turned and went to the library.

~~*~*~*~

Okay, so it was probably a Time Lord drug. Martha kind of understood why humans would take drugs. But…the Doctor? Why would he be so cavalier about this Jarrin stuff? And-

Why wasn’t it a good idea to administer this stuff intravenously? And hadn’t the computer said this stuff was from Gallifrey…?

And also, more importantly, this thing had holes the size of the gaps between galaxies in its data banks, and she needed information on what to do. Maybe the Doctor had been tricked by something into smoking these. Maybe the missing data said it was fatal for Time Lords and he’d gotten his plants mixed up.

Martha shook her head and stepped into the library, grabbing a pencil and a clipboard from their peg and turning to the left.

The TARDIS, it seemed, was on a similar page to her, and had arranged the bookshelf near the door to suit. Dozens of books with Gallifreyan script on the spines, and the English translations on top. All of them were about plants of Gallifrey, though a few- weirdly- were history books or books about the culture of the Time Lords.

Martha groaned. Gallifreyan books were the worst. The experience of reading them was like eating a slightly damp kitchen sponge.

Still. Needs must.

She grabbed a book with the title PLANTS OF THE SOUTHERN CONTINENT (KR’NEQ) and pulled it down.

Martha carried it to the sofa and sat down with a sigh.

“Doctor, I’m gonna kill you after you sober up.”

~*~*~*~

The Doctor was laying on his bed, a loony grin plastered on his face.

The room was spinning; round and round and round and round, tumbling end over end like the TARDIS through the vortex, and he could feel- he could feel-

The speed was incredible. It was bleeding his bones out of his fingertips, and as the patterns danced on the walls, everything started to make sense.

Swirling circles, his native language writing itself on the walls in reds and golds, _mene mene tekel upharsin _but who gave a shit what that gibberish meant when the ceiling itself was breathing in time with his heartbeats.

Four, four, everything had four, his heart beat four times with the volume of a jackhammer, the groaning of the TARDIS fell into a four note-rhythm, and all he could do was laugh as the pure bliss sank into the base of his brain and ate away at his fears like an acid cleaving through- cleaving through-

Time itself was bending, now, the golden lines of causality twining themselves into a shape he hadn’t seen for a long, long, long time, his name writing itself on the walls again and again, Time itself-

And the Doctor stared at his hands, a million miles and an inch away from his nose, watched the golden shimmers of warping time twine between his fingertips, and all he could do was laugh.

Time was running through his fingers like grains of sand, spiralling into infinity, his sanity slipping down with it.

~*~*~*~

So, first of all, Jarrin Root wasn’t toxic to things with two hearts.

Thank goodness for that.

Martha pushed the botany book aside, adding it to the small pile she’d skimmed. Check the index for the word “Jarrin”, discard if it didn’t have it, find the relevant passage if it did.

She’d taken notes.

Time Lords apparently really, really liked their Jarrin root; one of the books she’d found had been a collection of POEMS written under the influence of the godforsaken stuff.

One of the books she’d found had been a medical textbook, which A) she was so totally putting in the medbay because it was entirely about Time Lord biology, and B) contained the following passage about Jarrin Root:

_Symptoms of consumption include giddiness, euphoria, loss of balance, hallucination, inability to communicate telepathically, loss of motor control, extreme hunger, an erection that lasts more than four hours, and lethargy. Further symptoms may manifest depending on the number of regenerations the Time Lord has undergone. _

Which, frankly, really should be in the medical notes for this stuff.

Martha stopped with the last book on her lap, pondering what she was doing.

It was inevitable that some other poor sap was going to be travelling with this madman in his box. She had no intention of staying here forever, not after all the nonsense she’d been through. She wanted to be a doctor- a real one, a proper one. And that didn’t line up with saving the universe all the damn time.

All this information that she’d gathered, and the TARDIS medbay still had a really paltry entry in the bio-scanner.

And it was inevitable that the Doctor was going to do some dumb shit like smoke Jarrin leaves at some other point in the future.

“I’ll update it, then,” she muttered, “And maybe add a section for dumbasses so they don’t need four years of medical school to understand it.”

That was a good plan. The plan was further tempered by the observation in the book on her lap, recommending treatment for a strung-out Time Lord:

_Isolate in a dark and non-stimulating environment and allow four hours of rest. Further time may be required. If effects persist for more than three days, seek hospitalization immediately._

“Waaaaay ahead of you there,” Martha muttered, cracking open another book and checking the index.

~*~*~*~

Twin suns were setting at the foot of his bed, and the energy of the TARDIS was swirling around him.

Her voice was a voice, when he was like this; telepathy supercharged, every wall in his brain stripped away to a nub. Shields down, groping for the core of her mind, wanting to embrace her in all her glory.

She was so very angry.

He stared at the swirling lines of his ceiling, pulsing in hypnotic lines as they sketched equations and formulas for concepts not even he understood, circles in circles, and the TARDIS-

He called to her, sang to her, wanted to embrace her in his arms, in his mind, and she relented, finally, finally, letting him in, letting him touch up against her with a closeness they didn’t have with his mental guards up.

_I don’t like it when you’re like this, _she whispered into his mind, _you’re not…you. You’re a loopy, incoherently babbling mess, and I like you when you’re sober._

_I feel so good, _he whispered back, _everything feels so good. I feel so warm. So warm. Is this how humans feel? Always so warm? I love you. I love you so much. _

Her annoyance tumbled around him like clouds the size of the sky, surrounding him in red-blue-red-blue-red-blue emotion. She wasn’t alone, either. Martha was thinking, Martha was reading, Martha was afraid for him.

He giggled at them both. Reached for his TARDIS, heard her sigh that she knew about his love; and then for Martha, just gently, just-

There-

Oh, but she was worried. Humans. Humans cared so much about the things that didn’t matter and so little about the things that actually did.

He wanted to hug her, but she was busy. Later. Later.

He started singing, lines from songs half-remembered mashing themselves into a hideous conglomerate of High Gallifreyan and German.

~*~*~*~

It had been a little odd to hear the tune of ‘Ninety-Nine Red Balloons” being sung off-key in an alien language from somewhere behind the Doctor’s bedroom door, but that just meant that he was being good and hadn’t tried to leave his room.

So Martha opted to take that as a good sign.

Getting the bio-scanner to open up the Jarrin Root entry and let her make changes to it turned out to be a lot easier than trying to get it to provide her with a standard QWERTY keyboard with which to make those edits. It kept spitting out keypads for alien languages that Martha had never seen, and when it finally switched out for one that was French-Canadian-

Fuck it. Close enough.

Hopefully nobody minded the weird punctuation…

~*~*~*~

Several hours passed in relative silence. The TARDIS was parked, and Martha was flipping through books in the library, now out of a genuine interest rather than medical panic. She'd gotten a bowl of chips and a glass of wine from the galley to complement her reading- after all, what with the Doctor out of commission, it wasn't like she had much else to do.

She’d have to make a few more edits to her little Jarrin Root entry, because it turned out that Time Lord culture had a rich history with this particular plant. Who’d have thunk it?

An advanced civilization enjoyed their socially-sanctioned intoxicant of choice? How surprising. Where else in the universe would THAT be a thing?

Martha took a sip of her wine and turned the page.

Although, just as she was getting into the academy-acceptance celebration, the thought occurred that she should really check on her patient.

Martha got up, wine in hand, and tiptoed over to the Doctor’s room. He’d gone quiet an hour or two ago, and she sonic’d the lock and carefully opened the door

He was lying on his side, eyes drooped halfway closed. Sprawled out like a big cat.

And-

There was a noise like an idling gas-powered lawnmower, a sort of deep and rumbly “Rrrrr…rrrrr…rrrr…” noise.

It took Martha a minute to realize that the sound was coming _from the Doctor._

She shook her head, slowly closing the door. He purred? He purred. What the backwards fuck?

That…should probably go in her report.

They were absolutely going to have _words_ about this incident after he woke up, or sobered up, or whatever else. And she was confiscating his Jarrin leaves, assuming he had any left.

She just hoped that those golden ferns in the growing room weren’t even more of it.

That was the last thing the universe needed.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DON'T DO DRUGS, KIDS. 
> 
> But DO leave a comment if you liked it! Thanks to the people who commented on the last chapter- gave me the kick in the ass to finish this one off and get it ready to post. Commenting works!
> 
> Oh, and see if you can guess who's getting stoned next...


	3. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleven has a cup of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. This chapter was supposed to be simple. It's not. It's 7k words not. This really got away from me. Sorry about the wait.

The Doctor walked back into his TARDIS, slamming the door behind him and dropping his groceries on the floor. So much to do before tonight. Before his plans for tonight. It was almost his special day, after all.

“Right, what’s next?” he wondered aloud, checking his to-do list that was pinned to the console.

Amy and Rory were still asleep; TARDIS time, it was still early in the morning. Meaning he had a few hours to get some things done.

First things first. Check if his humans could eat what he was planning to cook.

He trotted to the med-bay, walking up to the computer on the far wall, and pulled up the genetic screening results for Amy and Rory. Specifically, allergies. Did they have any?

No. Well, none that were really relevant, although apparently Rory had an allergy to kiwi birds, so that would be an interesting conversation with him if it ever came up.

One thing off the to-do list, then. On to the next, in no particular order.

The Doctor trotted down the hall, stopping by a locked door. He’d posted a simple paper sign- CAUTION! TOXIC MATERIALS INSIDE!- and it had apparently worked, since neither Amy nor Rory had so much as jiggled the door handle.

He stepped in, flicking on the lights.

Nearly every growing trough was full of Jarrin roots, their golden fronds swaying in the artificial breeze. All of them were fully grown, scores of them; two hundred hugely different plants, the careful breeding scheme resulting in maximum genetic diversity for the founder population.

He walked down the aisle, running his fingertips along the leaves as he passed. The room was swirling with Jarrin spores, and it was making him feel a bit giddy.

All of them were out of time-acceleration and growing in real-time. It was a shame what was going to happen to them, because Jarrin- like many plants and animals from Gallifrey- grew _better_ when exposed to irregularities in the time stream. These plants looked full and healthy partly because the Doctor had incubated them at speed and let them mature out in real-time.

The spores from their red central stalks would, in nature, burst out and be carried by the wind, hopefully to another plant; and the spores would merge, and then seeds would develop, and-

Well, the little hooks were meant to catch clothing or fur, from whatever or whoever was rolling around in the Jarrin plants on that particular day.

The Doctor stroked one particularly large frond appreciatively. His hearts felt nothing but warm affection for these precious plants, nothing but love and happiness that he was able to save them.

…Although, on reflection, the spores swirling through the air was probably helping fuel those particular feelings. At least a little bit.

Still. They were his…brothers? Sisters? Whatever. They were from the same place, they shared the same home, and they were all orphans, now.

But unlike him, there was hope for these precious plants.

Which lead him back out the door of the growing room and into the storage way at the back of the TARDIS. Many moons ago he’d found a selection of crates in the depths of his ship- relics of a time in Gallifreyan history long since past, a time when a ship like his was on the cutting edge and when cramming a universe in a phone box would have been unimaginably difficult.

An ancient relic, like him, like his ship, whose time had now come.

If someone else had been following him, they would have noticed that the Doctor’s pupils were rather unnaturally large.

* * *

When Amy walked out into the console room, she was expecting the Doctor to be busily scrambling round it, typing in coordinates for a new place to go, shouting some gibberish about a place or a time she’d never heard of before.

What she was NOT expecting was for the Doctor to be busily moving a selection of floating crates around, very conspicuously not talking, at all.

He was also, Amy noted dimly, wearing a space suit. And it was bright red. And slightly baggy, like it had come off the peg at a department store or something.

The future was fucking wild.

“Doctor? What’s going on?”

“Amy! Good morning! I’m just, uh, I’m just doing something. Won’t take more than a minute.” He said, tapping a little button on the suit’s wrist so she could hear his voice (courtesy of a tinny little speaker on the suit’s chest.) Before Amy could ask specifically what that “something” entailed, he was grabbing the first of his crates on its hovering trolley and wheeling it through the open TARDIS doors. The rest of the weird grey crates sat on the ground, waiting for…something.

The door closed behind him, only for the Doctor to poke his head back inside.

“Oh, um, I’ve extended the TARDIS shields around the exit, so if you want to come have a look, there’s air and whatnot. Just don’t go more than a meter from the edge, alright?”

Amy shrugged and followed him.

The planet was, in the most flattering terms, a wasteland. Barren grey rock as far as the eye could see. Sheets of ice clinging on everywhere, with massive glacier visible in the distance. Two suns burning high in the airless sky overhead, locked in a binary dance- a yellow sun like Earth’s, and a small white dwarf. And in the distance, in the sky- was that a nebula?

The Doctor pushed his levitating trolley out past the edge of the shield, and unceremoniously upended it, dumping the plain grey crate with the weird circular writing into the dust.

He pressed his hand to the side of it, and swirled a pattern into the side, then took a few steps back.

The box unfolded itself, panels sliding and unpacking into something far, far, far larger than the small box it had been contained in. It was a narrow probe on long, slender legs, with a long whiplike tail pointed at the sky- like a diagram of a bacterium with its flagellum, only conical and pointed at the earth.

It bored down into the ground faster than Amy could blink, burying itself as it went- the only indication of its work was that the ground was shaking, violently, and as the seconds ticked by, the tremors lessened, too.

The Doctor walked back inside the force field, excitement obvious behind his helmet.

“Doctor? What the hell was that all about?!” Amy gestured at the patch of disturbed rock where the weird probe had gone in, and the Doctor just beamed, stopping beside her.

“That’s to get the planet’s core going again. Annoyingly, it’s gone cold, so that particular probe will burrow down there and fold spacetime a bunch, tidally flex the core from within, get some heat on it. Once that’s properly going, we can get some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and things will really start to heat up. Literally. Anyway!”

The Doctor patted Amy on the shoulder and lead her back inside.

“Come on, Pond. Let it do its work.” he said, and Amy reluctantly followed him.

The doors closed behind them, and the Doctor took off his helmet. He ignored the other grey crates, Amy noted dimly, and followed him back towards the console.

“Doctor, what the hell was that all about? What were you doing out there?”

He put the helmet down on the floor and started to shimmy out of the rest of the suit.

“Oh, that. Hard to explain, really, but…baking my cake, as it were.” He said with a big broad grin.

Amy stared at him.

“No, I mean, really, what exactly were they doing? Were you trying to terraform that planet?!”

“Terraform, now there’s an interesting word… “Earth-form,” or “Earth-shape,” I suppose, or “Make more like Earth,”…So no, Amy Pond, I am not “_terra_forming” that planet. I’m… hmm, not really a word for it, now I think on the subject. I’ll have to coin a phrase. I’m _Galliforming, _as it were. Does that answer your question?”

“Galliforming? So…you’re making a second…Gallifrey? Why?” Amy folded her arms.

“Not really a second Gallifrey. More… helping some long-lost siblings out of a bind, as it were.” The Doctor said impassively, “I’m just…preparing a field for them, that’s all.”

“So…why that planet? Aren’t there other planets that don’t have people on them, that already have an atmosphere and a molten core…?”

The Doctor sighed.

“Yes, Amy, but those planets? Tend to get colonists. They tend to have people on them, sooner or later. And if not, their biospheres are priceless, the creatures on them breathtaking…I’d rather not erase the future of a garden world for my own selfish needs. So the only other solution is making a barren rock hospitable to life.”

Amy nodded a few times, soaking the new information in.

“Alright. So, uh, is that it, then? Are we gonna just leave that planet alone for a bit?”

The Doctor nodded, pressing a few buttons on the control column.

Silence reigned for a moment. Unnatural, in this place, with this man. Amy looked around, and then ambled towards the Doctor, leaning on the control column.

“So… where are we off to today? Watch the Andromeda and Milky Way collide? You’ve been promising me that for a year now.” Amy asked.

“Yes, and WHY I’ve been promising you that, I’m not entirely sure, because watching galaxies collide is frankly pretty boring. Especially in real time. ESPECIALLY in real time. But no, today, we’re…doing something a bit different.”

The Doctor yanked a switch and sent the TARDIS tumbling through the vortex, just as Rory was walking down the hall.

There was a loud THUD and a muffled, “Ow, fuck!”

The shuddering of the ship stopped in record time, which was good, because Rory was rubbing the back of his head and had a dark scowl on his face.

“Doctor, would it kill you to maybe try to fly this thing more smoothly for once in your bloody life?”

“Yes, as it happens, Rory, it would. Anyway, Amy, you were asking where we were going today?”

“Yes, Doctor. That would be nice to know. So…where are we?”

The Doctor rubbed his hands together.

“We’re nowhere. We’re in the vortex. We’re taking the day off and staying in. It’ll be fun!”

Rory and Amy stared at the man like he’d just sprouted a second head.

“We,” Amy repeated, “Are “staying in” today? Doctor, are you feeling alright?”

“Perfectly fine, Amy! Perfectly fine. I just, uh, I need to catch up on some work, is all.”

Again, the room went dead silent as Amy and Rory judged the alien before them as though he’d sprouted a second head.

“You. Work.” Rory repeated, “Doctor, if you’ve done a single, full day of work in _your entire life,_ I’d be shocked.”

“I’ll have you know, Rory, that I did in fact hold down a job mopping floors at a nightclub on Abraxis-5 for a whole…oh, no, hang on. I got fired after three hours. Still! I have some work I need to be doing. I trust you two can amuse yourselves? It’s a big ship, after all. I’ll see you later?”

Amy slowly dragged Rory from the room with an unconvinced nod, never once taking her eyes off the Doctor as they left.

Once the two humans were gone, the Doctor rubbed his hands together and skipped off to go find where the TARDIS had stashed Martha’s old room.

* * *

Rory had dragged her off to the swimming pool for a few hours, claiming that whatever the Doctor was doing, if he didn’t want to involve them in it, they shouldn’t involve themselves. Better to stay out of whatever world-ending nonsense he had planned, after all.

That still didn’t stop Amy’s burning curiosity for what could possibly be so important that they’d be taking “A day off”.

She’d left Rory to continue to fail at doing the butterfly, and snuck off to go see what the Doctor was up to. He wasn’t in his study or any of the gardens, not the library or the hockey rink. The tennis courts were empty and the warehouse was too, and the room full of baseball caps was similarly void of Time Lords.

It was a bit of a disappointment when she found him in the galley.

Baking.

He was listening to some music, sort of; it sounded like someone had taken the screams of a dying star and ran it through a synthesizer about fifteen times until what came out was the second-worst dubstep ever beheld by human ears. Not to mention the rapping, which the TARDIS helpfully translated to be about plants.

Amy clapped her hands over her ears, watching as the Doctor used some kind of a lemon peel grater to remove the skin from a weird red root; he looked strangely content, nodding along to the “beat” of his song like it was a perfectly normal thing to listen to.

He ground up the rest of the root in the blender, scraping the slurry and the shavings into a bowl and mixing it with a spoon.

Baking. Really. They’d stayed in so he could… Bake?!

It was at this point that the song, MERCIFULLY, changed. Unfortunately, it changed to a song by Meat Loaf, but at the very least Bat out of Hell didn’t feature Vogon rap, so it was a marked improvement.

Amy shook her head, about to turn and leave, when the Doctor did something weird.

There were some old, dry yellow leaves on the counter, wrapped in a plastic bag. Amy watched as he opened the bag, leaned in, and took a very long and very deep sniff.

And then came a giggle so unhinged and creepy it made the hairs on the back of Amy’s neck stand up.

She swiftly decided to leave the Doctor to his baking, stalking away to go find Rory.

Amy didn’t see the Doctor turning around and switch on the kettle, retrieving his largest teapot and the small mesh ball for loose tea.

* * *

“I’m telling you, he was BAKING!” Amy said, walking down the halls with her husband unconvinced beside her.

“Are you really, really, REALLY sure? Like, hasn’t he said a million times he hates that kind of stuff?”

“I watched him do it, Rory. I stood there and I watched him. And then I watched him sniff these weird leaves and giggle like he was off his meds-“

“Has the Doctor EVER been ON his meds?”

“-Probably not. Point is, it was really freaky.”

They rounded the corner and Amy threw open the doors to the galley, expecting the Doctor to still be in there, puttering about with his ingredients and cracking eggs and whatever else.

He wasn’t.

The galley was spotless, apart from a bag on the counter and a pervading smell of cinnamon and lemons, with a faint note of grilling meat. It was a rich smell that was not of the Earth, a scent neither of them had ever smelled before; overlaid on the top of _baking._

It smelled really, really good.

“Alright,” Amy said, striding over to the plastic bag. It was full of dry golden leaves. “You go find him. I’m gonna go…take these leaves somewhere and try and figure out what they are.”

Rory quirked an eyebrow.

Someone- not the Doctor, it wasn’t his handwriting- someone had written “DANGER! DO NOT EAT!” on the side of the bag, in the worst scrawl Amy had ever seen. Like they were a lowercase-d doctor or something.

Amy looked down at the leaves, then up at Rory.

“I just wanna know what they are, okay?” she said, “Look, it’s probably nothing. I’m not gonna eat them or anything.”

Rory sighed.

“Alright, fine. But- just- don’t do anything stupid. Meet back here in twenty minutes?”

Amy nodded.

They stepped out into the hallway, Rory turning back to the console room and Amy turning down the hall.

There was a door Amy had only seen a couple of times before, and it usually wasn’t this close to the console room. The door popped open as she looked at it, and the harsh white medical lighting inside came on.

The TARDIS was giving her a little hint.

Amy smiled and gave the wall a friendly pat, striding inside.

* * *

Everything was so calm.

Every blink took an eternity, time spiralling around him at a snail’s pace; he could see the frozen threads of it, like the universe had stopped. The clock had stopped ticking.

The clock had stopped.

He was so warm.

The sofa was tilting, slowly, slowly, as he laid on it, leaning towards the wall, gravity shifting underneath him, and every time he closed his eyes vibrant patterns of checkerboard spirals wove up towards the heavens.

Circles in circles danced across all the walls as it all leaned in towards him, breathing slowly, slowly…

He sat up, the effort like lifting himself against the pull of a thousand lead weights dragging him down, back into a sitting position. Every motion was slowed- everything was slowed.

The mug was warm in his fingertips as he picked it up, watching the steam slowly rising from the lip.

Brought it to his lips.

Warm liquid, practically molten fire compared to the rest of his body. Spiralling down, he felt it sliding down his throat, the sensation so mundane and yet magnified.

The taste of gritty cinnamon and grilled meat, with notes of lemon; all-consuming. It filled his mouth, filled his nose, drowned those senses out and flooded them with the taste.

It was not a good taste. He winced, putting the mug down.

The clank was deafening as it hit the glass of the coffee table.

Sinking down, drawn by the earthlike gravity his human companions preferred. The inexorable tug as his head plummeted towards the pillow, smashing into it a sensation that had him stunned for a moment.

The clock had stopped.

On the screen in front of him, pictures, flickering. He studied it.

A show. Right. The show he’d put on.

Mickey the Idiot used to like this show.

The Doctor snorted.

The warmth in his stomach spread in pulsing waves, from the middle to his fingertips and down to his toes, pulsing waves of warmth and, and-

He felt so…good…

Cars revved on the screen in front of him. Three British men standing around in…Bolivia?

They were on a raft with some cars.

The Doctor giggled.

Stupid humans. The trees were so pretty…

The door to the media room opened, and the noise happened in a different time zone. The Doctor turned a full minute after it had opened, head shifting away only reluctantly.

Rory. Rory was standing there, surrounded by the shimmering snapshots of his timelines.

“Doctor?” he asked, and it sounded like the word was coming up a drainpipe.

The Doctor giggled.

“Roooooreeeee” he said, levering himself upright with a titanic force of will.

He patted the sofa beside him. Thud. Thud. Thud. The echoes reverberated through time.

“Roreeeee…s’ a bloke show…wanna watch…with me…?” he offered, the grin oozing from his face, from how languid and happy he felt.

“…Are you watching _Top Gear?”_ Rory was the picture of incredulity.

The Doctor giggled.

“yeeeeeesssss…Ricky the Idiot used to like this show…watch with me?”

Rory stared at him.

“I, uh, I- Sure. Sure I will, Doctor. I’ll be right back. I have to tell Amy where you are. Don’t- don’t go anywhere.”

The Doctor nodded slowly, listening to the door snick closed somewhere far away. He flopped down on the other side of the couch, letting his head rest on the arm.

Another sip of tea.

The languid grin on his face notched higher.

The visions were going to start soon.

On the TV screen, the Fat Jeans Human fell into the river, and the Doctor's grin ratcheted up another notch.

* * *

“Amy!” Rory yelled, stumbling into the medbay; the door was wide open and he’d seen her from down the hallway, “Amy, the Doctor’s- the Doctor’s- he’s high. He’s fucking high. I don’t know on WHAT, I hope to GOD it’s not ketamine, but he’s spacey and- oh, and the console’s turned off.”

“Turned off?” Amy repeated, looking at him with wide eyes, “Why would he-“

“Probably because he looks like he’s taken a bunch of heroin?” Rory suggested, “I assume he turned it off himself. It’s just- He’s just- I’ve never seen him move so slow or look so- so- strung-out.”

“Well, that would certainly explain this stuff, then.” Amy muttered. She was standing by the bio-scanner, one of the yellow fronds floating in the box, with a holographic screen in front of her.

“What’s that?” Rory asked, stepping up to take a closer look.

“Jarrin Root, according to this.” Amy gestured at the screen, “And it looks like it’s not the first time he’s had this. Someone called Martha wrote up a whole explanation and put it in here. Look.”

_If youère reading this message, then clearly heès picked up another bunch of tagalongs. _

_By the way donèt mind the ès, the only keyboard I could find was French-Canadian, so it does weird stuff like make my question mark into a É and my apostrophe into a è. _

_This is Jarrin Root. Ièm going to assume youère human, so: DO NOT EAT THIS STUFF. Donèt lick it. Donèt sniff it. Wash your hands if you touch it. Itès a powerful CNS combination stimulant and depressant. What that means in laymanès terms is that it can stop your heart or give you a fatal heart attack. Weère not strong enough for this stuff. So wear gloves. _

_As for the Doctor, if heès gone and had more of it, then youèll need to put him in a dark and quiet room for four hours. Heèll be fine, itès harmless for things with two hearts, aside from the fact that itès essentially a recreational drug to him. _

_If you have medical training, the following symptoms were what he displayed when I was with him:_

_-dilated pupils _

_-giddiness_

_-hallucinations_

_-poor impulse control_

_-balance problems_

_-purring _

_Yes, purring. I…donèt know either._

_The effects differ depending on the route of administration. The Doctor inhaled smoke when I was with him. _

“…The Doctor. Smoking a joint?” Rory echoed incredulously, “That’s…. ridiculous.”

“Did he have dilated pupils when you saw him?” Amy asked, and Rory nodded.

“They were huge. Blown so big I could barely see his irises.”

“He’s probably on this stuff, then. Did you see any joints or a bong, or-?”

“No. There was a cup of tea, though.”

Amy nodded. “That might be it, then.”

“…as an aside, is there any particular reason you’re not letting **me** handle the medical stuff?”

“I didn’t know he was gonna be tripping balls! I thought it was just some weird Time Lord tea thing. If I’d known, I’d have let you handle it.”

Rory sighed and rolled his eyes, and they both turned back to the screen.

_I donèt know what the other routes of administration do, but the books I read suggest that it makes a difference if itès inhaled or eaten or drunk. If you swallow it, it acts as a depressant, and if you inhale the smoke or compounds from the fresh leaves, it acts as a stimulant. Another book I read suggested that heating it above 90C converts one of the main active ingredients to a hallucinogenic form. So if heès made tea out of it or something daft like that, heès probably hallucinating. _

“…Tea, right?” Amy asked. Rory sighed.

"Yep. Tea. Which is typically 90-100 degrees. Okay, so he’s hallucinating _and_ on a depressant. Matches up with what I saw. What did it say about treatment?” Rory asked, rubbing his forehead in frustration.

“It said to lock him in a dark and quiet room for four hours and extend the time as needed.”

Rory paused.

“Well, I mean…he’s in the media room with the lights off.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he was lying on the couch. Drooling. And watching Top Gear.”

“…He was watching _WHAT?!”_

* * *

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Salt. Vinegar. Carbs.

The texture of the chip in his mouth was like eating a mountain, the sharp stone peaks jabbing into his tongue, sea salt grains the size of boulders.

The TV screen was still showing pictures, humans driving cars alongside a cliff, some anger, he wasn’t really paying attention. The walls were bending towards him, warping, twisting, and he stared in fascination as they moved.

The bookcase where he kept a collection of prized DVD’s was starting to melt towards the floor.

He swallowed his chip and grabbed another one, watching it dribble away, watching the DVD’s lettering slip off their spines and onto the floor.

The leather on his face was so sticky. He pulled himself up slightly, cheek unsticking from the leather. He mumbled a complaint in his native tongue, then shoved another handful of chips in his mouth.

The ceiling was breathing. In. out. In. out. Flexing like his diaphragm.

He was way too hot in this tweed jacket wow

The light from the TV was trickling out, spiralling between all the frozen timelines. The Doctor stared at it, wondering if he could- if he could-

He reached out a hand for it, a deep rumbling in his chest, and started to sing in his native tongue.

Light and time twisted themselves into cables, looping ropes that drew circles, endless circles, the words in his native language as he sang to them, sang the first thing that came to his mind. Which was unfortunately “Thank You” by one Dido, much to the chagrin of everyone with functioning ears within a hundred parsecs, but the visions were so, so worth it.

More chips.

He was so hungry.

The circles dribbled onto the floor, and the Doctor struggled against his confining jacket. It was trapping him, he was trapped in it- pulling at the heavy coat, struggling and thrashing to get it off, but he wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t-

Ten minutes ago the door had opened, or would open, or will open, and the Doctor didn’t notice until his name had echoed off the far wall of the media room and slammed into the other side of his brain.

He turned his head, slowly, a tangled mess of blankets and tweed and Time Lord.

Amy was standing in the doorway, Rory by her side.

He giggled. Deep in his throat.

“Amy, Amy, Amy, Pond,” he sang, “Amy. Come. Watch. Sit with me and watch.” He patted the empty bit of sofa up by his head and gestured at the TV.

“Human show, you know? Bloke stuff. Roooooreeeeeee. Come watch with meeeee,” he said, looking at Amy’s husband.

Two identical looks of confusion met his eyes.

Oh bugger, that wasn’t English.

“Come watch with me?” he asked, and their eyes lit up. Okay, THAT was English. Hooray hooray.

Things moved around him. The door closed itself at some point, the click of the lock louder than a bomb going off, and he giggled even through the inherent twitch at that, at the thought of bombs, at the thought of-

The giddy feeling, the whole-body high, it took his fear and pain and stamped it to the width of a coin, then used that coin to buy a hypervodka soda shooter at a vending machine on the dark side of Abraxis-5, in that one alley with the purple bricks and the six-legged Nosk in heels and what? Where was he going with that?

Oh.

His head was in Amy’s lap.

She was so warm. Humans were so warm. He forgot and then remembered and then forgot and then remembered like the waves lapping at the carpet.

“Doctor?” Amy’s voice was a million miles away, and he slowly rolled his head up to look at her.

Rory was shoving his feet aside, somewhere near the other end of the sofa; it might as well have been another continent for all the Doctor knew about it.

“Hmmmm?” he replied slowly, watching as the patterns shifted across Amy’s skin. Circles in circles, and if they’d just slow down, he could read the words of her timeline, sketched out on her face. If she just stayed still, he could see the future, the true future, he could taste it-

“Why did you do this to yourself?”

He giggled.

“Amy Pond. Amy, Amy, Amy, Amy Pond.” He repeated, “Amy, asks the smart questions. The good questions. Hmmm.”

The sound of his own voice was weird. Distant. Mumbled and gravelly.

“English sounds so guttural and…gross,” he mumbled, “I sound so. So. Stupid. In my tongue, I sound like a cello-“

“Doctor!” she shouted, jerking him to attention, the bombs detonating in the back of his mind, but then being bundled away by the looseness, the euphoria-

“Doctor. Why. Did. You. Drink. That. Stuff?!”

He rolled onto his back, legs bent up, eyes blown wide, looking up at Amy Pond.

A loose grin on his face.

“S’my…my… uhhh… Birthday,” he said, “S’mybirthday tomorrow. M’ nine-hundred-an’-fifty, I think. It’s my birthday. I wanna get, uh,” he frowned, forcing his addled brain to give him the words. His brow furrowed.

“What do the kids say? I wanna get fucked up. I wanna get blasted. I wanna be off my face. S’my birthday tomorrow, Amy Pond. I wan’…”

Rory and Amy shared a look about ten miles over his head, and the Doctor rolled back onto his side.

“I made…a cake,” he mumbled, “Food. Root of the plant. Not the leaves. Roots are safe to eat. For humans, I mean. I- nobody’s had Jarrin cake in, uh, in…”

Focus slipped out of his fingers like grains of hourglass on a beach. Made of hourglasses. Um. 

It didn’t matter.

The Doctor giggled.

The humans were talking over his head and he was tired. The TV was subtitled in Circular Gallifreyan, which was a godsend to his brain. Because English was this harsh guttural grunting, and he wanted to hear the music of his native tongue.

A hand- a hand that wasn’t his- reached out for his mug.

“Noooo” he mumbled, sitting up and reaching for it, “Lemme finish it-“

“I think you’ve had more than enough,” Amy said, “Doctor-“

“Lemme- please- I won’ have any more, after, I just want-“

“Doctor, I’m cutting you off. You’re drooling on my tights.”

He whimpered.

Humans moved around him, leaving him there on the couch. The TV dimmed, the sound went quiet. It was okay. He still had subtitles.

The blanket slipped over him, letting him sink into its softness.

He looked up to see Amy, adjusting it and leaning over the back of the sofa.

Oh.

They hadn’t left him.

Amy took his tea away, though.

Time passed. The world melted. The show stretched on, and on, and on.

A sense of contentment in the Doctor’s chest grew, and grew, and grew. It was a rumble, a roar, a sound like rocks tumbling down a slide.

“rrrrrrr…rrrrrr…rrrrrrr…” He purred, eyes unfocusing as the last of the visions spiralled away.

Amy’s hand stroked through his hair.

The door closed with a snick.

All was dark.

All was calm.

The clock had stopped.

And then-

Tick.

Tick.

Tick…

* * *

Several hours later, the Doctor staggered into the galley, bowtie undone and jacket off, blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

He opened the fridge, grabbed a carton of pear juice, tore the top off, and started chugging it straight down, not pausing to breathe.

The minute the last of the juice was gone, a thought prickled into the back of his mind. The TARDIS would have stopped the oven before his cake burned, and put it into stasis to keep it moist. He should probably put it in the fridge.

He opened the oven.

His cake was gone.

Weird.

The Doctor shrugged. The TARDIS must have gotten tired of waiting for him, and moved it to another one of the fridges herself. He’d find it tomorrow and have a slice, and then spend his birthday doing what he should have done two regenerations ago.

For now, though, sleep.

For the first time in three weeks.

* * *

The next morning, the Doctor was up…later than he was hoping for, really. Much, much later.

Get up. Morning routine. Shower, brush teeth, nearly decapitate self with fifth regeneration’s straight razor. Etc.

Still. He’d had a deep, dreamless sleep, a sleep for twelve hours according to his internal clock. More sleep than he’d had in a month, and some of the best he’d had in ages.

Maybe he should use Jarrin root more often-

The TARDIS mentally slapped him.

The Doctor sighed and shrugged on his jacket, stuffing his sonic screwdriver in the pocket and closing his door behind him.

To his surprise, Amy and Rory weren’t in the console room. He’d slept so late, and yet they still weren’t up.

Humans.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, programming in the coordinates for his planet and a time a thousand years in the future from when he’d last been. Which wasn’t saying much; by the time he was finished, his little planet would be vaguely contemporaneous with Amy and Rory and their idea of Earth.

He yanked the switch to fling them out of the Vortex, slightly surprised that the TARDIS was being gentle. No pitching about and flinging his tea on the floor; the landing was gentle and graceful, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow and patted the console.

He’d barely had to do anything.

Weird.

A quick check on the monitor showed him that the pressure outside was high enough for him to go out without a suit- 102 kPa with rounding- but the oxygen levels weren’t high enough to breathe. The temperature looked alright; the CO2 levels were maddeningly high, but that was alright. They’d be coming down in short order, and it had melted all the planet’s ice reserves to form the oceans it needed.

The molten core was working a treat, too- a stable magnetosphere had formed, to protect the newly-formed atmosphere from getting blasted off by the solar wind. The volcanoes belching up CO2 into the air, well, that was also a good thing too. 

Atmosphere concentration was mostly CO2 and N2- a good start. No ozone, though. Still. There were ways of fixing that.

He slipped into his space suit, doing up all the straps and seals. Slipped the vials of precious cyanobacteria and algae into his pocket, already genetically preprogrammed to do their jobs.

All part of the kit.

He stepped outside, taking in the strange pinkish-reddish sky and smiled.

Not a blade of grass, not a speck of life; but the sky was full, the stars were hidden in the daytime, and the continents were moving.

He stood by the shores of a vast ocean, on a windswept beach; a pristine pool, barely salted, ready for the spark to trigger the explosion.

The Doctor very carefully took the vials out of his pocket, tipping each one into the ocean in a sequence. Red, blue, green.

Then walk a few steps down the beach and rinse the vials out twice.

Then come back in a million years.

No point taking off the space suit, really.

So, he didn’t. Another bizarrely-gentle jump from the TARDIS, and they were a million years into the future.

Oxygen levels had SPIKED. All the sinks were saturated, and free gaseous oxygen was building up. Righto, time to check on the little guys.

He stepped outside and groaned aloud at the ENDLESS. FUCKING. GLACIERS.

“Forgot about the snowball effect,” the Doctor muttered angrily. Well, that was just brilliant. Reverse the greenhouse effect, get a snowball. BRILLIANT.

This was going to take a few attempts.

* * *

Several million years, three hours, and one accidentally-on-purpose asteroid strike later, the Doctor had his planet and he had it full of seas and life. A quick stop to seed fungi and bacteria on the rock, get some soil going on the naked continents, and he would be ready to get started.

The Doctor checked the readout on the TARDIS screen. Stable atmosphere. Oxygen concentrations not QUITE breathable, but good enough for now. CO2 concentrations a bit high, but that was okay.

Jarrin liked it a bit on the hot side.

“Modifying planets,” he muttered to himself as he stomped down the steps to his pile of grey crates, “What a pain in my arse…”

“Doctor!”

Amy was standing on the railing, arms folded.

“Amy! Yes, good morning, or good afternoon, I suppose-“

“We’ve been waiting for you for the past four hours. What have you been DOING? Why’d you skip breakfast?”

“If you must know, I was busy bouncing back and forth between several different time periods,” he replied, awakening his hover-trolley, “And I’ve about got this planet sorted, so- I’ll join you both for lunch after I finish Galliforming my planet.”

Amy sighed, watching as he strapped on his 45th century SCBA tank (A face mask and a tube connected to a microscopically small bottle of oxygen that nevertheless could last for forty hours) and stepped outside.

Amy followed him to the bottom of the steps, staying inside the TARDIS doors and just leaning out.

Her eyes went wide.

He dumped the crate on the rocky brown earth, stroking the side and bringing it to life. Amy watched as it unfolded into a strange, segmented, almost animalistic machine; a whirling tower of steel-skewer spikes on spiderlike legs with a pulsing blue core, that scratched at the earth, scanning everything. Another crate unfolded itself into a wheeled truck with a foundry inbuilt. Dozens of machines unpacked and unfurled themselves, and as the Doctor offloaded the last crate, they started setting up their own little factory.

Amy watched the tall, spindly spider-bot with the blue core march back with an armful of rocks. It dropped them into a chute on one of the machines, and the whole factory sprung to life…

The Doctor traipsed back to his TARDIS, beaming at Amy through the face mask.

As soon as they were back on board and the mask was off, the Doctor went towards his control column, fully intending to take off to the next part of the job.

Amy grabbed his arm.

“Doctor,” she said firmly, “We’ve got a surprise for-“

“Not now, Amy, I’m busy,” he replied, shaking his arm free and setting the coordinates, “Gotta get this done. I’m so close. And then- whatever it is. We’ll go wherever you like. Okay?”

Amy sighed.

“Alright, fine. Meet us in the galley when you’re done messing around with your robots.” He could hear the eyeroll and the mutterings of _clueless! _as she walked away.

Galley?

“Alright,” he said, “Galley. Got it.”

One thousand years in the future. Set the coordinates. Time jump. Not place jump.

The TARDIS managed another amazingly gentle landing, and it was starting to confuse him.

Whatever.

Right. SCBA time.

He slapped on his breathing apparatus and marched outside, smiling at the wall of metallic faces that greeted him.

Thousands of harvester drones, assembled autonomously from the factories dotting the planet’s back; as the fungi and microorganisms colonized the soil, the drones would multiply, preparing to care for their crops.

Gallifrey had once owned a small number of “feeder worlds”; other planets entirely devoted to agriculture. Long before they’d gotten really good at cramming entire university campuses into phone boxes, they’d had planets to sustain them. Worlds run by these tall, spindly, gleaming metal monsters, entrusted to be their caretakers. Dozens of hands, able to shapeshift their bodies into any conformation needed. Farming, fully automated, for a species that abhorred picking dirt from under their nails. 

In the old days, they kept the planet fed.

And he had a pretty old TARDIS. And some former Time Lord had chucked a kit for making a feeder world into storage, and then sent his type 40 TARDIS straight to the scrap heap with the precious machines still inside.

The Doctor chuckled.

What an idiot.

“HELLO!” he shouted in his native tongue, the musical tones of High Gallifreyan ringing through the air. The drones stopped shuffling about and turned to listen, all of them focusing on the Time Lord in their midst.

“So. It’s been awhile since you’ve been needed. Here are your orders. You’re to grow me one plant, you understand? And I want this planet COVERED. I want a lush CARPET of this stuff. I want the whole surface of this world covered in Jarrin Root, from the top of every mountain to the bottom of every valley. I want a monoculture to shame Planet Iowa. And I want every single frond bathed in love, and I want you to tend to them no matter what. To the ends of the universe. Defend this planet at all costs and do not let ANYONE take it. Understood?”

_YES, MY LORD. _The response was a telepathic roar, the gathered throng of drones eagerly accepting their orders.

“And it’s the Doctor. You don’t answer to anyone but me, understood?”

_YES, LORD DOCTOR,_ the drones roared again.

“Good! Now, some of you, follow me. I’ve got your plants for you.”

* * *

The Doctor hummed, strolling past the galley door without a glance inside.

Following behind him were about twenty gleaming Harvester Drones, their cores glowing a multitude of colours. Inside the TARDIS, they’d shifted their forms into something like skeletal dogs with heads like army ants. Their dozens of skewer feet twisted into slender limbs, the metal fragments of their bodies moving like animate mercury to conform to a new shape.

From inside the galley, Amy and Rory watched in horror as the Doctor lead a line of demonic robot dogs into the depths of his ship.

The Doctor threw open the doors of the Jarrin room, and gave the lead drone- one with a pulsing blue core- one of his seeds.

The creature snapped it up into its “mouth”, scanning the genetic blueprint of the seed and determining the optimal care patterns for it.

“You,” the Doctor said, “Are to transmit this to the rest of the swarm. Understood? So. this is it. These are your plants. Jarrin Root, and ONLY Jarrin root. Understood?”

_YES, MY LORD. _

“Good. Now, go…transplant them, or whatever it is you need to do. You come find me when you’re all finished.” The Doctor gave the blue-cored drone a pat on the head and ambled off to the galley.

Behind him, the Harvester Drones were morphing their forelimbs into hundreds of needle-thin wires, forming baskets that could carefully scoop the live plants from their troughs without damaging the slightest root fibre.

The Doctor strolled into the galley as the trail of drones continued to run in and out of his ship, like a line of ants on the march. The ones coming in had four limbs, the ones going out were up on long stilts, cradling their precious ferns in special baskets under their bodies. Some would come carrying nets full of seeds, and one was coated in the spores of the plants.

“Might want to stay out of the hall until the TARDIS finishes cleaning it,” the Doctor advised, “They’ll be tracking spores out of that room until they’ve got the last of the plants taken away. Anyhow! What was it you wanted to show me, Am-“

The Doctor stopped mid-sentence, eyes going wide.

Amy had her arms folded, and Rory was leaning on the counter. Both of them looked more than a little annoyed.

“Honestly, Doctor,” Amy said with a sigh, “You’re the only person I know who just brushes off their own birthday party.”

They’d taken his cake and frosted it with some kind of white icing. The TARDIS had stopped the oven and frozen the cake in time so it would still be moist, as he’d known she would. But these two- they must have moved it before he woke up.

And on top of the cake were candles. Three of them, the gaudy number-type candles, spelling out 950. Well, sort of; the candles had clearly been lit for a little while, so it was more like 95U, but the thought was what counted.

They’d found his cake, heard it was his birthday, and decided, in that typically human way, to mark the occasion.

And the Doctor, for once in his life, found himself at a complete loss for words. He’d been acting like a dick the last day and a bit, so focused on his Galliforming mission, and they’d still done this? For him?

“I- Oh, Amy. Rory. I’m- I’m- You didn’t have to do that,” he said, hearts seizing when he realized what was happening, “I just wanted to share it with you. That’s all-“

“Yeah, well, it’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” Rory said, “Baking your own birthday cake? With no icing and no candles? Bit tragic, really.”

“Yeah. So, we sorted it out. Now come on and make your wish, it’s dripping all over everything. And I really want to try a piece of this, not gonna lie.” Amy gestured at it, like he should probably hurry up and blow out his candles.

So this was why the ship was being so gentle. She didn’t want to destroy his birthday cake.

The Doctor walked around the countertop to stare down at his cake, the little candle flames reflecting in all their eyes. 950 years. And the brilliant, stupid, weird, wonderful little apes he liked to travel with had decided to mark the occasion with one of their typically brilliant, weird, stupid little traditions that he didn’t want to admit he adored. Not out loud, at least.

Well, there were a few things to wish for. But as he looked at Amy and Rory, there was only one he could really think of.

_Please, for the love of all anyone’s ever done, let these two be happy, in spite of me. _

He blew out the candles.

* * *

They ate their cake outside the TARDIS, safe in a bubble of air she was projecting around them. Sitting back under the dual suns and watching the Harvester Drones work.

The Doctor had found some folding chairs in the depths of a cupboard, and they all sat back, enjoying the taste of a treat that hadn’t been baked since the Time War.

“Amy? Rory?” he said after a few minutes of watching the green-cored drones laying down rows of fertilizer, “I’m sorry.”

“Mmm? For what?” Amy asked, popping a small sliver of cake into her mouth and doing her best to hide her grimace from the Doctor, “You…didn’t…mmmf…”

“I did, though. I’m sorry I’ve been a bastard the last few days. I just- I should have told you what I was planning to do the night before. It’s just- I haven’t used Jarrin for a long time, and the last time I did, an old friend took my last two leaves away and locked them in her room. I had to turn the TARDIS upside-down to find them again.” He sighed.

“Well,” Rory said quietly, “How often do you do this stuff?”

“Not often. I haven’t for a few years. Not until last night.” The Doctor said, “I wish alcohol affected me. This is about the only thing that does. Except for, um, cocaine, which _does_ affect me, but I don’t want to talk about that.”

“…Is that connected to The Keith Moon Incident?” Amy asked, wondering if she could feed her bit of cake to a nearby drone without the Doctor noticing.

“I- yes. And I told you to never speak of that ever again, Amy Pond.” He said sternly. His face softened. “But…Yes. I’ve been a bastard. And I’ve been keeping secrets and I should have told you both. So, I’m sorry.”

“Mmmm. Well,” Rory said, “At least this time you weren’t dragging us off to get us killed. So there is that. So I guess we can forgive you for the odd bender. God knows I had enough of them when I was taking nursing.”

“I seem to recall something about you and Trent’s Happy Brownies, Rory-“ Amy said with a big smile.

“-YES, CAN WE PENCIL THE HAPPY BROWNIES IN WITH THE KEITH MOON INCIDENT, PLEASE AND THANK YOU.”

The Doctor shook his head, helping himself to another forkful of cake.

“So. What’s the plan after this, then?” Rory asked.

“Mmmmm. Amy’s been badgering me to watch the Andromeda and Milky way collide. So maybe we’ll go into interstellar space and watch it happen. It’s going to be really boring though, I warn you.”

“I dunno, Doctor. Your definition of boring and my definition of boring aren’t really the same thing.” Rory said.

Things fell into a peaceable silence as the three of them watched the robots work.

“Doctor?” Amy said finally, “Remember that thing earlier about you being sorry for not telling us stuff?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. I _really_ hate Jarrin Root. This is AWFUL!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's a show the Doctor wouldn't be caught dead watching, I said to myself, and then I said, Self, the Doctor is not a car guy and would not appreciate Top Gear. Not at all. That's my explanation, pls no hate. 
> 
> If you liked it, if you hated it, leave a comment! Please. Please dear god I bled for this chapter it's so long and there's so much going on and the science is as correct as I could make it. This was supposed to be stupid "the doctor does drugs" fluff comedy and then I was googling things about alien skies and arrrrghhh. 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts. On all the bits you liked.


End file.
